Chapter 12: Kira - Marrying the Mafia Daddy

I’m still turning over everything Carly said when the car comes into view. So it feels like a blessing when my phone rings. I fumble the phone out of my jacket pocket without checking the screen, expecting Domenico, maybe the store about my deliveries, or Dad who I still haven’t heard from.

“Hello?”

“Is this Mrs. Kira DeLuca?” A woman’s voice. Professional, steady.

“Yes.” The street suddenly feels too loud, too bright. A bus rumbles past, and I press my finger against my free ear. “This is Kira speaking.”

“Mrs. DeLuca, my name is Kitty Patrick. I’m a nurse at…” I barely register anything after that. All I hear is the name of the hospital.

My feet stop moving and I press the phone harder against my ear. “Is Mom okay?”

“There’s been a medical emergency, and we need you to come in as soon as possible.”

The words don’t land right. They hit and slide off, like water on glass.

“What?” My voice sounds thin, stretched. “What kind of emergency?”

“We’re treating her now, and the doctor will explain everything when you arrive.”

“Treating her for what?” I’m walking again without meaning to, my pace quickening. Carly’s fallen a step behind me. “Is she conscious? Is she alive?”

“Mrs. DeLuca, I can’t discuss specifics over the phone. Please, come to the hospital as soon as you can.”

“Tell me if she’s alive.”

“She’s alive and being treated. That’s all I can tell you right now. Please come directly to the neurological floor when you arrive.”

The call goes on for maybe ten more seconds. I hear words, but they stop meaning anything. Stable. Tests. Doctor. Nothing sticks except the shape of the sentence: medical emergency.

My hand drops from my ear. The phone hangs at my side, the nurse’s voice still coming through the speaker, small and distant.

“Kira?” Carly’s hand lands on my shoulder. “What is it?”

I open my mouth to answer her, but nothing comes out.

Carly takes the phone from my limp fingers. “Hello? My name’s Carly and I’m with Mrs. DeLuca. Who am I speaking with?” She listens, her face tightening. “We’re on our way. Ten minutes.” She ends the call and shoves the phone into her own pocket.

Her lips are still moving, but I don’t catch a word she’s saying. I barely even notice it when she links her arm with mine and guides me, or when Vinny takes my other side. The sidewalk tilts under my feet. A man on a bike swerves around us, and the buildings blur.

“No,” I say. The word comes out wrong, too loud. “No, she can’t—”

“We don’t know what happened,” Carly interjects. “We don’t know anything yet. Deep breaths.”

But I can’t breathe… I can’t… breathe. My lungs feel like they’re full of sand.

Mom can’t die.

She’s not allowed to. Not when I’ve done everything right.

I angrily swipe at the tears trailing down my cheeks. Because how dare the universe? Or is it God? I don’t care if it’s the damn Easter Bunny. Mom. Can’t. Die. I won’t allow it.

Vinny’s already holding the back door open to the car. I climb in without registering the movement. Carly slides in after me, and then he slams the door and is behind the wheel before I’ve fastened my seatbelt.

The car pulls away from the curb with a screech. Horns blare as Vinny zig-zags through traffic. He doesn’t stop when the traffic lights are red, and he creates his own lanes where possible.

“She’s dead,” I say. The words sit in the air between us, ugly and final. “She’s dead, and I wasn’t there.”

“She is not dead,” Carly says. Her voice is sharp, cutting through the fog. “The nurse said she’s being treated. That means she’s alive, Kira. Focus on that.”

I press my palms against my eyes. “All this time, the same thing every day, and now…” My voice cracks. “What if she seized? What if she stopped breathing? What if—”

“Stop.” Carly’s hand closes around my wrist, pulling my hand away from my face. Her eyes are hard, steady. “You’re making it worse. We’re only a few minutes away, and then we’ll know. Until then, you just focus on breathing.”

Doing as she says, I inhale.

“Again. Slower.”

I drag in a breath. Hold it. Let it out. The fifth one is easier. The eighth is worse.

“Who are you calling?” Carly suddenly snaps, making me look at my empty hands.

“I’m calling the boss,” Vinny replies.

“Don’t call him until we know what we’re dealing with,” she hisses.

“He’ll want to know.”

“And he will know. Five minutes from now, when we have actual details instead of sending him in blind.”

I can feel the argument happening around me, but it’s happening to someone else. I’m watching the buildings slide past the window, counting blocks to the hospital, each one taking too long and not long enough.

“I can’t lose her,” I whisper. The words come out small, childlike. “I can’t. I did all of this for her. The wedding, Domenico, everything. If she dies now…”

“She’s not going to die.” Carly’s hand finds mine, squeezes. “I promise.”

I can’t help but resent her a little for saying that. Because she doesn’t know. No one does.

The car turns onto the hospital drive. The building looms ahead, all glass and concrete, and my stomach drops through the floor of the car. Vinny comes to an abrupt halt right outside the sliding doors and immediately cuts the engine.

“You have five minutes,” he says, turning to look at us. His jaw is set. “Then I’m calling the boss.”

“That’s fair,” Carly agrees.

The three of us rush into the looming building. Despite being here practically daily for over a year, I feel like a rat in a maze as soon as I step inside. Luckily, Carly pulls me in the right direction, saving me from having to give directions.

“I’ve got you,” she says. “Just keep walking.”

I keep walking. One foot in front of the other. The elevator doors open. Close. The floor numbers climb. My heart is beating so hard I can feel it in my teeth.

The doors open on the neurological floor, and the world narrows to a single point: get to Mom.

I don’t remember the walk from the elevator to the nurses’ station. One minute we’re stepping onto the floor, and the next I’m leaning against the counter with Carly’s hand on my back and Vinny already talking to someone in scrubs, his voice low and urgent.

“… DeLuca family,” he says. “We need to speak with the doctor immediately.”

I open my mouth to correct him because Mom isn’t a DeLuca. But before I can force the words out, the nurse looks over at me, and something shifts in her expression. Recognition, maybe. Or pity.

“Someone will be with you in just a moment,” she says. “Please, have a seat.”

I don’t want to sit. Sitting means waiting, and waiting means my brain has time to fill in the blanks with every worst-case scenario I’ve been stockpiling since the accident. But even while thinking that, my legs carry me over to a row of empty chairs.

Carly sits beside me, close enough that our shoulders touch.

The floor is quiet in that specific way hospital floors get when something’s wrong. Not the busy hum of a regular day, but the hushed, deliberate quiet of people moving with purpose behind closed doors.

A machine beeps somewhere down the hall. The sound crawls under my skin and stays there.

Vinny stands near the nurses’ station, arms crossed, watching the corridor. Every thirty seconds, he checks his phone. I know what he’s thinking. The five minutes have to be up.

“Tell me something,” I say to Carly. My voice sounds raw. “Anything. Talk.”

She doesn’t hesitate. “The first time Gio brought me flowers, he showed up with three dozen red roses but no vase. I had to put them in the kitchen sink.”

It works. For about four seconds, my brain latches onto the image of Gio standing awkwardly with an armful of roses. Then the machine beeps again, and I’m back in this chair, in this moment, waiting for someone to tell me how badly my world has broken.

A door opens down the hall. A woman in a white coat emerges, tablet in hand, and walks toward us. She’s older than I expected—fifties, maybe, with gray-streaked hair pulled back in a loose bun and glasses perched on her nose. She looks like someone who’s delivered a lot of bad news and learned how to do it without breaking people.

“Mrs. DeLuca?” Her eyes find mine.

I stand. Too fast. The room tilts, and Carly’s hand steadies my elbow.

“Yes. I’m Kira. How is my mom?”

“Let’s talk in the consult room.” She gestures to a small room off the main corridor, all beige walls and uncomfortable chairs.

“I want to see her first.”

“I understand. But I need a few minutes to explain what happened, and then you can see her. It’ll be easier if you have the context.”

Easy… nothing about this is easy. Still, I follow her into the room because it’s the fastest way to get to Mom. Even though the doctor offers me a seat, I don’t take it.

“Your mother suffered a seizure,” the doctor says. Her voice is calm, measured. The kind of voice designed not to scare people. “The nursing staff was with her when it began. They administered medication immediately, which stopped the seizure within two minutes. She’s been stable since.”

Seizure. The word echoes in my head.

I’ve read about seizures so I know what they can mean. Progression. Decline. The beginning of the end. God, I wish my brain wasn’t immediately going to the worst place possible.

“What caused it?” My voice comes out steadier than I feel.

“That’s what we’re working to determine. There are several possible triggers…”

She keeps talking, but the words blur together, clinical and distant, like she’s reading from a textbook instead of talking about my mom.

“… So while it’s concerning, it’s not necessarily indicative of a larger decline. These events can be isolated.”

“Is she going to die?” The question cuts through everything else. Sharp. Desperate.

The doctor pauses and looks at me directly. “There’s no indication of that at this time. Her vitals are strong. The seizure was controlled quickly. But until we understand the cause, I can’t give you a definitive prognosis.”

I nod along, waiting for her to stop talking, and the second she does, I say, “I want to see her.”

The doctor stands and tells me to follow her. Then she looks at Vinny and Carly and furrows her eyebrows. “Immediate family only,” she states.

Carly nods, accepting that. Vinny, however, doesn’t. He argues that he won’t let me out of his sight. I want to scream at him to stop wasting time. In the end, the two of them reach a compromise, and the doctor locates a place Vinny can stand and look into the room through the glass in the door.

Without looking back, I follow the doctor into Mom’s room.